Accents and other diacritics

[Armchair cyclist]

In the last 24 hours or so, the site seems to have lost the ability to handle accents and diacritics. Given that our subject matter draws heavily on a wide range of languages, and those about whom we write have names that carry many symbols beyond the unadorned 26 letters of English, this is not a good change.

 

[Benotti69]

? ? ? ?*?*∂?

test..............

edit: so it would seem!

 

[Eshnar]

In the last 24 hours or so, the site seems to have lost the ability to handle accents and diacritics. Given that our subject matter draws heavily on a wide range of languages, and those about whom we write have names that carry many symbols beyond the unadorned 26 letters of English, this is not a good change.

yup, I already told Dan. Hope it'll be fixed soon.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

yup, I already told Dan. Hope it'll be fixed soon.

Any progress?

 

[Eshnar]

Any progress?

I'm afraid other issues have taken priority lately

 

[Armchair cyclist]

Still nothing?

It does make quite a difference to processing entries for CQ games...

 

[Libertine Seguros]

...and it has been over three weeks now. Plenty of posters are in countries which have more than the standard 26 characters in their Latin alphabets...

 

[Armchair cyclist]

Into a sixth week of this now: it is becoming difficult to believe that the site publishers are really interested in correcting this.

 

[lemon cheese cake]

You cant even read simple things with hyphens.

 

[sam]

As Jeff has pointed out we have some very serious issues with the forum, we are working flat out to get these resolved.

Jeff will keep you updated.

 

[Netserk]

As Jeff has pointed out we have some very serious issues with the forum, we are working flat out to get these resolved.

Jeff will keep you updated.

Please, for the love of God, don't change the forum like you have changed the main site. Only bug fixes, please

 

[TheGame]

Please, for the love of God, don't change the forum like you have changed the main site. Only bug fixes, please

Well they are using vBulletin Version 3.8.7 which is the final release of v3 (28 February 2011), although there was a patch last March which i assume they implemented, there is somewhere a 3.8.8 beta

Will they fix Vb themselves, will they upgrade to 4, will they upgrade to 5..

The world awaits

 

[sam]

Well, its an interesting issue as we are running such old code we can't just simply upgrade to latest and greatest from day 1.

We are looking at ways of limiting the amount of changes as lots of users don't really like change, so we are trying to upgraded the software, update the UI to match the new sites header and footer (nothing more) and ensure that nothing changes too much from what we have right now some we are having to compromise on.

Software we are looking at dropping VB and switching to PHPBB so that both the Bikeradar & this forum are the same versions so we don't have to fix security holes and other issues twice - this approch will mean more retrofitting UI elements to match the current icons and positioning of buttons.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

So was it really impossible to simply revert whatever change was made in late January as soon as you were aware of the ensuing problem?

I for one have seen no other effect of changes in utility from that point, so it does not appear that it was part of a critical fix. What good came out of those changes that make this problem a proportionate price to pay?

Was there any testing before those late January changes were rolled out? How is it that no-one saw this before it was inflicted upon users?

And why has there been no apology?

 

[lemon cheese cake]

Well, its an interesting issue as we are running such old code we can't just simply upgrade to latest and greatest from day 1.

We are looking at ways of limiting the amount of changes as lots of users don't really like change, so we are trying to upgraded the software, update the UI to match the new sites header and footer (nothing more) and ensure that nothing changes too much from what we have right now some we are having to compromise on.

Software we are looking at dropping VB and switching to PHPBB so that both the Bikeradar & this forum are the same versions so we don't have to fix security holes and other issues twice - this approch will mean more retrofitting UI elements to match the current icons and positioning of buttons.

When it does change will all the threads be moved over as its a completely different website and everythimg would have to be re-done, i.e a thread like the Tace Design Thread has lots if good ideas, and everything would be lost.

 

[sam]

When it does change will all the threads be moved over as its a completely different website and everythimg would have to be re-done, i.e a thread like the Tace Design Thread has lots if good ideas, and everything would be lost.

We will be migrating all the data - we have been doing test migrations and we have lost one thread from 2008 that has 2 posts inside - so we possibly will not worry about that.

We need to do an official communication about it, if its decided that's what we will do (migrate forum software).

 

[sam]

So was it really impossible to simply revert whatever change was made in late January as soon as you were aware of the ensuing problem?

I for one have seen no other effect of changes in utility from that point, so it does not appear that it was part of a critical fix. What good came out of those changes that make this problem a proportionate price to pay?

Was there any testing before those late January changes were rolled out? How is it that no-one saw this before it was inflicted upon users?

And why has there been no apology?

Yes it is impossible - to give "exactly the same service" - The Cyclingnews Forum ran at Future on a very old physical server that hadn't been restarted in 7 years - when we Immediate purchased and migrated to a modern VM we couldn't install the software versions that we required by VB and by the Databases so we had to make a decision, either:

A - Do nothing
B - Try to fix software from 2011 to "keep it the same" and downgrade servers to unsupported PHP/DB versions.
C - Investigate upgrading VB to work with the new & stable base software
D - Ditch VB and move to something better that will work & migrate all data

Realistically A,B would be stupid and C & D are the ones we are following up with.

Something we have leaned in this exercise is visibility, we will ensure that we the development team are more open with changes that are happing.

I can apologies to you for not getting this fixed immediately but unfortunately my priorities have been on other things - but now they are firmly set on fixing the forums and making them more stable, easier to use and maintain.

 

[Armchair cyclist]

Yes it is impossible - to give "exactly the same service" - The Cyclingnews Forum ran at Future on a very old physical server that hadn't been restarted in 7 years - when we Immediate purchased and migrated to a modern VM we couldn't install the software versions that we required by VB and by the Databases so we had to make a decision, either:

A - Do nothing
B - Try to fix software from 2011 to "keep it the same" and downgrade servers to unsupported PHP/DB versions.
C - Investigate upgrading VB to work with the new & stable base software
D - Ditch VB and move to something better that will work & migrate all data

Realistically A,B would be stupid and C & D are the ones we are following up with.

Something we have leaned in this exercise is visibility, we will ensure that we the development team are more open with changes that are happing.

I can apologies to you for not getting this fixed immediately but unfortunately my priorities have been on other things - but now they are firmly set on fixing the forums and making them more stable, easier to use and maintain.

Thank you. After nearly six weeks we have an explanation, if not an apology.

Would it really have hurt to say "We've made some changes that we believe are important and should not be indefinitely delayed. Unfortunately they have had this unforeseen side effect, for which we are sorry."? I would have thought that a basic requirement of respect for product users, but instead all we have had is "Yeah, we know, but we are doing something more important."

 

[sam]

Thank you. After nearly six weeks we have an explanation, if not an apology.

Would it really have hurt to say "We've made some changes that we believe are important and should not be indefinitely delayed. Unfortunately they have had this unforeseen side effect, for which we are sorry."? I would have thought that a basic requirement of respect for product users, but instead all we have had is "Yeah, we know, but we are doing something more important."

Its all related to this issue which Dan posted when we were made aware http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?t=26068

 

[Armchair cyclist]

Its all related to this issue which Dan posted when we were made aware http://forum.cyclingnews.com/showthread.php?t=26068

OK, so there was, as I stated, an issue that had to be addressed. That still does not explain the lack of the basic courtesy to apologise for a side effect. Nor has there been any relation between the two issues made before now, which is not great transparency.

Those of us unaffected by log-in issues are not likely to read a thread on log-in problems. Not that that thread either apologises or explains the link either.

 

[sam]

OK, so there was, as I stated, an issue that had to be addressed. That still does not explain the lack of the basic courtesy to apologise for a side effect. Nor has there been any relation between the two issues made before now, which is not great transparency.

Those of us unaffected by log-in issues are not likely to read a thread on log-in problems. Not that that thread either apologises or explains the link either.

I'm sorry - that I didn't say sorry.

 

[RedheadDane]

So, has this been fixed yet?
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